


Double Blind Date

by stellarmeadow



Series: Jot it Down July 2018 [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Blind Date, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 23:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarmeadow/pseuds/stellarmeadow
Summary: Steve's having a dinner for one when a stranger walks up to the table....





	Double Blind Date

**Author's Note:**

> They're getting longer...someone stop me.

Steve stared at the menu, trying to decide which meal would make him look the least conspicuous as he ate at a fancy restaurant alone. It wasn’t exactly his usual type of place, but a gift card was a gift card, and he wasn’t about to pass up free food. 

At least the waitress hadn’t taken the other place setting away. Maybe people would just think he was waiting for someone. 

“Excuse me, are you Steve?”

Steve looked up. The man was maybe five and a half feet tall, blond and bright blue eyes, and a suit, complete with a tie that was totally out of place for Hawaii. He was also clearly packing some muscles under that suit. “Yes,” Steve said. 

“Oh thank God.” The man sat down. “I didn’t write down which restaurant Gina said. I was afraid maybe I had the wrong one and I’d stood you up.”

A blind date – that explained it. Steve opened his mouth to say he had the wrong guy, but before he could, the man started talking again. “I’m Detective Danny Williams – sorry, of course, you know that,” he said with a smile. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late—had a case and the perp made me tackle him in mud, and it took a while to—sorry,” he said again, with that same smile. “I’m a little out of practice on dating, and I tend to babble when I get nervous so, um…hi.”

Now was his chance. Steve should absolutely tell Danny he had the wrong guy. That some other guy was the person that his friend thought was right for him. Make the most attractive guy he’d seen since moving back to Hawaii walk away forever. 

“That’s okay,” Steve said. “I’m a little out of practice, too.” 

The waitress approached, giving the second seat an odd look. “My date is here,” Steve said to her, hoping she didn’t say something about not expecting a second person. He looked at Danny. “Do you need a minute?” 

Danny’s face turned a little pink. “I looked at the menu online,” he admitted. “I’m ready.”

They placed their order, and the waitress went to put it in without commenting on the sudden extra person. “So,” Steve said, before Danny could ask too many questions that would let on that Steve wasn’t who Danny was expecting, “tell me about yourself.” 

“Well, Gina probably told you I was a cop, right?” At Steve’s nod, Danny said, “I’ve been with HPD about a month. Moved here to be with my daughter, Grace.”

“Grace is a pretty name.”

Seriously, too much exposure to that smile could short out Steve’s brain. “She’s a pretty girl,” Danny said. “Of course, I might be a little biased.”

“You got a picture?” 

“I have so many pictures,” Danny said. He opened up his phone and showed Steve the screen, a smiling picture of father and daughter that warmed Steve’s heart and made it ache a little, all at the same time. 

“She’s beautiful,” Steve said. He looked up at Danny. “She has her dad’s smile, lucky kid.”

There was that slight flush again, though it was difficult to tell how much was embarrassment and how much was something else. Because there was definitely something there on both sides—Steve wasn’t so out of practice that he didn’t know the signs. 

“Yeah, well….” Danny cleared his throat. “You got any kids?”

Shit. Was he supposed to? “You mean Gina didn’t give you a file complete with a background check?”

Danny shook his head. “She didn’t tell me much at all, really.” 

The flush deepened, and Danny wasn’t quite meeting Steve’s eyes. “Oh really?” Steve prodded. “Nothing?”

Danny shrugged, more or less meeting Steve’s eyes again. “She might have said something about you being freakishly attractive and me needing to, um…get out more.”

Based on the bright pink face, Steve inferred that to mean Gina had said something more like ‘get laid.’ “So you don’t…’get out’ much?”

He wasn’t sure if it was the candlelight or the innuendo that made Danny’s eyes sparkle like that. “I ‘get out’ more than Gina seems to think,” Danny said. “But…actually dating in a city that thinks blonde, pale guys in a tie are the equivalent of Ronald McDonald can be tough. Add in being a cop and having a kid…the dating pool is pretty thin.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” Before Danny could dig in with questions of his own, Steve said, “So what about the rest of your family?”

***

“So then,” Danny said, “I hear this plastic click, and I look down, and Matt has handcuffed me to the monkey cage.”

Steve’s sides hurt from laughing. “With your own handcuffs?”

“Yup. Joke was on him, though—they had a release switch he didn’t know about.” Danny took a long drink. “He ended up cuffed to the cage for half an hour instead before I came back and got him out.” 

Steve shook his head. “You were a very devious detective at the age of nine,” he said, as he picked at his dessert. He didn’t want the evening to be over, because at some point Danny was going to find out Steve wasn’t the Steve he’d been expecting, and that would likely be the last he’d see of Danny.

Though if it was, it had been worth it. 

Still, maybe if he explained, Danny would understand. Because what self-respecting upstanding detective wouldn’t want to be tricked, lied to and strung along for a whole evening? 

Shit.

“Everything okay over there?” Danny asked.

Now or never. “Yeah, it’s just…there’s something I should tell you.”

“Don’t tell me you secretly have three wives and two husbands on the mainland.” 

Steve laughed. “No. But I—”

“McGarrett?” 

Shit. Shit. Shit. Steve looked up to see his father’s old partner, Chin Ho Kelly, a few steps away. 

“Hey, it is you,” Chin said. “I thought so. When’d you get back?” 

“A few days ago,” Steve said, focusing on Chin to avoid looking at Danny. 

“How’s your dad?” 

“He’s good.” 

Chin clapped him on the back. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner,” he said, looking at Danny, then back at Steve. “Give me a call, let’s catch up.” 

Steve agreed and Chin wandered off, leaving Steve to finally look at Danny, who was giving Steve a front row seat to what it would be like to be in an interrogation room with Detective Williams.

“McGarrett?” Danny said. 

“Um…yeah. Actually, that’s what I was just about to tell you.”

When he didn’t continue right away, Danny sat back, folding his arms over his chest. “I’m all ears.” 

“I wasn’t entirely honest earlier. I’m not actually your blind date.” 

“You don’t say.” 

The sarcasm was practically dripping. “I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I just…I couldn’t help myself.”

“What, you were bored and decided to mess with me for the evening?” 

“No!” Steve leaned in. “Look, I just got back home, and things haven’t been that great, and then you showed up and….” Nothing for it at this point but raw honesty. “You were the best thing I’d seen since I got back. And I didn’t want you to leave.” 

Danny looked at him for a long moment. “Okay,” he said at last.

“Okay?” That was too easy. “What does that mean, okay?” 

“It means okay.”

“Well thank you for that stunning lesson in linguistics.” He realized Danny wasn’t quite meeting his eyes now. “So you’re okay with me having not been entirely honest?”

That slight squirm confirmed it. “Okay,” Danny said, “I wasn’t entirely honest with you, either.” 

“Oh?”

“I don’t know anyone named Gina,” Danny said quickly. “There was no blind date. I was on my way home, and I stopped in here to follow up on a couple of questions with the hostess. She was a witness in a crime last week. I saw you come in, I heard you say table for one, and…I don’t know. I didn’t want to leave either.”

Steve took a long, deep breath, Danny’s smile as much a relief as the oxygen. “You know,” Steve said mildly, “You could have just said, ‘hi.’”

“And you could’ve just said you weren’t my blind date.”

“You didn’t have a blind date.”

Danny ducked his head and laughed, and Steve’s stomach did something he hadn’t felt it do since junior high. “Yeah, okay, fine, we’re even.”

“Good.” Steve touched Danny’s hand where it lay on the table, leaving his own covering it, just enough that Danny could move his if he wanted. But he left it there. “So, wanna go on a date?”

That laugh was either going to make Steve’s life or break it one day, he could tell. “Yeah,” Danny said. “I do.”

\--  
END


End file.
